The fastest graphics card on the planet, the Nvidia GTX295 reaches 289 Watts at peak usage, which places total wattage on the PC at around 500 Watts when gaming at home. Add to this the fact that, on occasion, you will be participating in online multiplayer sessions, the total energy consumption is immense.

Now consider how much this same home desktop computer consumes when idle. Unfortunately, most GPUs do not scale down very well and obtain only moderate energy savings when performing regular browsing and office duties. Compared to an energy star-rated business laptop, they consume far more energy. My X61 consumes around 15 Watts and is therefore incomparably more economic than my desktop performing light-weight tasks (~250 Watts), as long as I do not replace it before it dies following present consumerist trends.

If I could ditch my desktop (which is for gaming, web dev, and video) in favour of diminished performance in video but with the ability to offload gaming hardware requirements, then the benefit to me personally would be great, given say a futuristic 500Mb/s connection (the maximum available to me is 20Mb/s on a fibre-optic connection to my flat).

I would like to know how much energy is consumed in data transmission when cloud computing process-intensive tasks but I wonder if the benefits will still be quite significant, given that my gaming desktop will no longer be used. When you consider that gaming hardware and energy requirements (now ~ 500W at the top end) will only increase, surely it is best to offload data processing to server farms in your city (like Gaikai in LA) or others located close by.